Within just days of arriving last summer, Stan became ill, involving many trips to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and culminating in surgery only weeks after our arrival.

One day afterwards, when he was at home recuperating, I had an errand to do and called a local taxi, as we do not have a car.  My driver happened to be one we had already become acquainted with, and since Stan and I usually went nearly everywhere together, Aaron (my driver that day) patted the empty front seat where Stan would normally have been sitting, and immediately wanted to know, "Where is Stanley?"

This is the story of a miracle.  Miracles happen every day, but we don't necessarily notice them all the time.  To those of us who have made aliya, we know that the idea of a miracle in eretz Yisrael is natural........ not to be taken for granted, of course.  Or do we take it for granted????  Sometimes we merit to witness a very great miracle being performed for us.  In any case, my point is that miracles in eretz yisrael are meant to be. I made aliya last July through Nefesh b Nefesh.  I will never forget the excitement and happiness........ however, the difficulties that I faced with determination.  I made aliyah as a single mother of 3 children, hoping to live our lives in peace and to leave the suffering behind.

I’m not what you would call a “dog person,” but since my Dalmatian, Fleck, died last week, I haven’t been able to stop crying.  Until I got a dog, I secretly scoffed at people who got all mushy over their pets, confounded by their incomprehensible attachment to a mere animal.  No more. Fleck (Yiddish for “spot”), was with us for fourteen years, which made her almost one-hundred equivalent human years old.  Over the last twelve months or so, she lost her hearing and her back legs became wobbly.   As recently as the previous Shabbos, she jumped for her piece of motzi challah, but that was the only jumping she did all week.

As I struggle with clothes pegs and a slack line, I remember my mother, mouth full of pegs, bending, spreading and pegging in one fluid motion. It was my task, at her side, to hand her the socks, already paired. Up with the Joneses in our small Western Australian country town, our washing machine had the latest in wringer technology (ie. electrically driven). We had a rotary clothesline, which my father built himself, and on which the neighborhood children and we were often chastised for swinging. Nobody heard of a dryer!

We're crazy settlers. At least, that's what everyone tells us. That's what the newspaper says. That's what the "security fence map" shows. That's even what relatives say when we invite them to visit us. But it's strange, because I don't feel like a crazy settler. I do believe there are crazy settlers. I just don't think I'm one of them. Nevertheless, I figured you would be interested to know what the average day of a crazy settler is like. I wake up in the morning, go to shul, come home and help Gilla (a little) get the kids ready for school. Then I drive to work. The kids walk to school. Is that crazy?

It has been almost six months B”H since we moved to the Holy Land (not Lakewood) and by now quite a few people actually believe (or noticed) that we left.  As you know literally thousands of articles, stories and vignettes have been written about the Aliya experience.  Most of them deal with the spiritual awakening and the wonderful experiences shared by those who have made the journey. Some deal with the trials and tribulations encountered by the families as they try to acclimate themselves to Israeli society.  There is humor and sadness, insight and ignorance, but by and large everyone tries to describe or explain the unique nature of their extraordinary experience. Then there is us.  

B”H, we have had an uneventful move.  No mysteries, no intrigue, no incredible experiences (although the reception orchestrated by Nefesh b’Nefesh was pretty cool), no epiphanies, no divine revelations, no unbelievable difficulties, no incredible salvations, just the everyday Divine miracles that allow us to function as a relatively normal family.  We have good days and bad days much like we did back in Baltimore, although almost everyday I am amazed that we are here.  Let’s face it, living in Eretz Yisroel is just not the challenge it used to be.  The stores are overflowing with great food. Just about every convenience is readily available.  It took less than twenty minutes to get a cell phone, and less than two days to get DSL.  Medical care is on par if not better than most western civilizations, and you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get a Jewish doctor. They definitely do things differently here, some for the better and some for the worse, but I don’t remember Baltimore being utopia either.  Don’t get me wrong, Baltimore is still our home team; but when your here it’s like rooting for the team where your son is the leadoff pitcher.  We miss the snow, but not the freezing rain or the hurricanes and we still like to call Bais Yaakov to see if school has been cancelled.  There is a language barrier, but if you are patient, most Israelis are more than happy to learn the new words you’ve coined in Hebrew.  Just last week I spent approximately three hours in Israel Discount Bank where I either opened a checking account or bought the branch office.

Tisha B'Av is rapidly drawing to a close as I look over the hills to Jerusalem from my front porch in Efrat. Efrat is home to me and Menashe. There are many people who think we are crazy; these are the reasons why we are not.

Last night with thousands of others I went to Jerusalem davened and walked around the walls. I heard the speeches, felt the comradarie of Jews that did not "know" each other but stood together at Har Sinai. We arrived at our waiting spot and the bus didn't come, and the bus didn't come, and the bus didn't come. We marveled at the interaction, non-stop, of Jews coming to the Kotel (it was 2 am). The air was electric.

This motzai Simchat Torah I finally felt perfectly at home. It hit me while at the community-wide hakafot shniyot at the main synagogue in our new home of Kiryat Shmuel, a religious neighborhood in the Galil, on the Haifa-Acco bay. As I sat on a bench to take a breather from the intense dancing, I looked at the crowd of maybe 1000 people dancing with and around the Torah scrolls to the lively tunes of the band.

When we first came to Israel, we came with 4 duffle bags of clothing and a few keepsakes. We walked into an empty apartment, with just the four walls and two kitchen sinks. No kitchen cabinets of course. We had no furniture, no closets and no appliances for 4 months. It was canned food, pizza and falafel for us at that time.

I don't have to tell anyone how hard these concrete floors are here, but sleeping on them with small Israeli mattresses was not my idea of a good nights sleep. When we met a neighbor of ours, she came to our place and saw how we were living. She wouldn't have it. She immediately gave us her table and chairs used for her sukkah, and 2 small cots.

Bus stops in Israel defy description. A bus stop could be a yellow metal flag on a pole listing the bus numbers and destinations, it could serve as a reinforced mini-bomb shelter or it might be a ghost stop, where a bus stop used to be and people, out of habit, still wait there while the bus drivers dutifully pick up and let off passengers.

Bus stops here double as bulletin boards. Posters announce neighborhood gatherings, demonstrations and Torah classes. Signs warn women to preserve their modesty by wearing a wig, or not. Death notices and funeral times are posted and what time Shabbat enters. Offensive posters are marked over or ripped off. Israeli bus stops reflect local needs.

This was written a few days following the tragic terrorist attack at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav in Jerusalem.

Every morning I take the 35 bus line to work. It's a quick ride and usually takes no more than 12 minutes. The third stop after I get on by the shuk is directly in front of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav.

This morning I found myself a bit anxious, unsure of what I was going to see as we passed by. As I looked around, I saw death notices pasted all over the street and flowers that had been brought lined the entrance to the Yeshiva.

I will never forget the day of the first rain in Cheshvan during our first year on aliyah. At the first sign of drizzle, people walking on the streets stopped and lifted their hands to the sky. As the murmurings of the first rain spread, workers in buildings opened their windows to catch the fresh droplets on their outstretched arms. Children were holding their heads back in desperate attempts to catch raindrops in their open mouths. Teenagers were pulling out their cellphones to report this great miracle of nature. But my five year-old son, Ariel, captured the whole experience with one insightful thought. " In America, when it rains, it's just rain. In Israel, when it rains, it's a brecha." May Ha-shem bless us with many first rains in the upcoming years as we build and celebrate new lives here in Eretz Yisrael. Nessie and Moshe Fisher ‘02

We have had our share of ups and downs during the first year.  It has been the support of our friends of NBN, the new friends that we have made here in Israel and family.

Here's another 'only in Israel' story.

We were trying to find a way to get to the Kotel. We finally hailed a taxi, and after having haggling over the price of the a ride to the Kotel with the cab driver, we told him we had just made Aliyah and had arrived in Israel only two weeks before.

We entered our new apartment and it was still being cleaned...no biggie, all the kollel wives that live in our vicinity left food on the table (provided by the yeshiva) and stopped by to welcome us...so nice! Our very first 2 shabbosim we were invited out Baruch Hashem (a staple phrase in kollel life) since our lift had not yet arrived. -Upon arrival we were informed that we were the lucky winners and that our lift was going to be inspected....$$$$.... The central airconditioning unit in the dirah was not working but in the meantime we had one from the yeshiva (and blew too much money on a couple of fans from Tambor)...until they needed it back for the boys that were coming in a few weeks...

After preaching and teaching about the importance of making aliyah and putting it on a pedestal almost on par with all other mitzvot in the Torah, I finally did it. I led by example, I made the move, the major sacrifice: I journeyed home.

As I sit here in my bomb shelter - converted into a cozy office - and look out my windows to the trees I planted and the lawn I mowed, I think about the millions of Jews who only dreamed of this moment. For many are they who could not even imagine we would be able to fulfill the Biblical command to Abraham, "Go live in that land, build your family and nation there, and there you will be blessed."

Others, however, tasted it. Herzl prophesied that within a hundred years the land would be ours, we would have a place to call home, Jews would come home from all the corners of the earth. In his generation and the ensuing ones, the idea began to germinate, the meetings were held, the leaders emerged, and the nascent steps towards a Jewish sovereignty began to take shape.

Yet, a hundred years would be needed before any Jew - any Jew - who was willing to make the move was finally able to do so. And slowly, Jews started coming home. Today, one walks the streets and sees Jews in army uniforms with Magen Davids on the lapels, Sephardic Jewish police officers, South American Jewish postal workers, Russian Jewish engineers, American Jewish carpenters, Moroccan Jewish presidents, and Israeli Jewish taxi drivers. One can not help but marvel at the reality of this dream, of this kibbutz galuyot (ingathering of the exiles), of this manifestation of the words and the message of the Torah: The Jewish people should be together, in the land promised to Abraham by God.

Well, it’s been almost 3 weeks now, and the adjustment is….well, adjusting. The yo-yo of emotions I’ve felt over the last few weeks has been overwhelming.

The first 2 weeks I spoke to my family in the US, every day. Then I realized the phone bill was going to be astronomical, and my in-laws might just kick me out for phone abuse. So I cooled off. Now I speak every other day!

It’s hard for the idea of “I’m here permanently” to penetrate my brain. I still feel like it’s a vacation, although I’m getting tired of it already (living with others is wearing out my patience, I yearn for my own S-P-A-C-E!!). I am hoping once we get our lift and move into our (empty, lonely) rented apartment things will feel different.

There were a few things I’ve noticed lately as we’ve been bumming around the Jerusalem area. These are the bright notes people try to remind you about when you tell them, so far things are in the “bad dream” phase; We were at a crafts fair, and a non-religious salesman was giving us the halachot (Jewish laws) regarding a handmade wood serving piece he was selling.

With the observances that began last week with Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and concluded over the past two days with Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Hatzmaut it's been an emotionally and spiritual intense seven days. Part of that intensity and the reason why I've given so much thought about what to write is because these observances, like everything else in Israel, bring with them not just the expected emotions but a hornet's nest of controversy, exposing all that is wonderful and frustrating about the diversity of Israel's population.

I don't want to get into the various issues, nor do I want to talk about my feelings on the issues (even after ten months I still know how to be diplomatic).  Instead I want to share with you my experience yesterday spending most of the day in Chevron.

I'd never been to the city before, never had the opportunity to visit the Me'orat Hamachpelah, the final burying place of our patriarchs and matriarchs.  Hesitating before due to terror related fears, after ten months of living here and envelope pushing those fears dissipated.  When my shul posted on the email list an opportunity to travel with our Rabbi to Chevron for a morning of study and touring I checked with Rachayle and replied I would go.

Eight people in all joined us. It was immediately apparent upon meeting our guide that he was one of those fascinating people, born and raised here, who'd absorbed by osmosis the significance of every hilltop, rock and blade of grass.  Any tension we felt at discovering that the van wasn't bulletproof dissipated in a flurry of gallows humor (It's okay, you can sit by the window) and our guide's awareness of the historical import of the sights outside our window.

It's hard to know where to begin. The fact that I haven't been writing about gas masks or sealed rooms is in itself incredible.  After all the build up, the stocking of the sealed room, the shlepping gas masks to Jerusalem for Shabbos, the dawning realization that the war in Iraq was a non event in Israel is like the icing on the cake to the Pesach joy enveloping us.  It's like all of us just looked up in middle of the frenzy of Pesach cleaning and said, "Hey, nothing happened" (usually while cleaning the sealed room).  You smile at your spouse, neighbor, friend and then get back to cleaning, taking a little extra delight in the sheer normalcy of what you're doing. It's the frenzy though that's incredible.  Pesach here is not something a small minority does, it's an all consuming national event.  Everyone is exhausted from cleaning.  Everyone's houses smell like bleach.  The lines at car washes stretch for blocks at every car wash.  Everybody is buying more Matzah and wine then they could possibly need. The funniest thing is listening to the radio or looking at billboards. 

Monday nights are my late nights.  I teach evening classes in two Jerusalem yeshivas and I catch the 11:00 or 11:30 bus for the hour long ride back to Ramat Beit Shemesh. With someone else doing the driving, I usually use the time on the bus to make some phone calls on my cell phone.

Last night I was talking to my father (there's something surreal about watching the Jerusalem mountains twinkling with lights pass by while talking to a Brooklyn office in the middle of the workday) when I was put on hold for a minute.  While waiting, I scanned the passengers around me and noticed something.  It was 11:30 PM.  The bus would not arrive at its final destination until after midnight.  Yet half of the bus was filled with children, young children under the age of five most of whom looked more awake than their parents.

Journal, No. 8, 01/26/04, Shevat 3, 5764

The other day I asked myself what, so far, has been the most meaningful part or experience of living in Israel.  Of course, the Kotel (Western Wall) immediately came to mind, but although that is very special, and once upon a time would have been my answer, I didn’t think that that was still number one for me.

Our trip to Shiloh a few months ago (which I have yet to write about), where the Mishkan (Tabernacle) stood for 369 years, was pretty incredible to me.  “They” really think they know exactly where it stood--and we were there!

In honor of my 4 month anniversary living in Israel, I wanted to share a brief update on some recent experiences and thoughts of mine. Aside from securing a wonderfully enriching job at the Jewish Agency, I’ve been involving myself with the beauty and excitement that Jerusalem has to offer, including some amazing student discounts on memberships to the Israel Museum & the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

All in all, it’s been wonderful and in some ways I feel like I’ve been here for much longer than four months. On the other hand, there are times when I feel like a complete stranger.